Children do not belong in grocery stores.
No, that’s not right. I should qualify that. Ill behaved children do not belong in grocery stores.
Ok, I’ll correct myself again. PARENTS of ill behaved children do not belong in grocery stores.
I love grocery shopping. I run a food blog. No fooling, I love grocery shopping. I adore the entire process, start to finish. Figure out what you want to make, and decide what you need to buy. Make the list. Decide which store(s) you’re hitting up for the best deals. I always get a shoppers high when I swipe my debit card at the register. There are good things in my reusable shopping bag, and I’m going to cook them.
Tonight, unfortunately, was not one of those shopping trips. I’d stopped by Shoppers just for a few quick things. I knew I couldn’t make it a marathon trip. Not like I couldn’t lose myself among the shelves of mustards, vinegars, and eggs, but I was wearing my work appropriate hooker heels and damn were my feet killing me. (Note for my female readers: these shoes are cute as hell. 3 inch heels, black, open toed, with a little bow on the front. My toes felt like ice in this weather but I was fine with it. I looked good.) All I needed was a carton of milk, cat food, and kitty litter. And that’s what I got. Along with rosemary roasted chicken (on sale), Baby Bell cheese, and two chocolate muffins.
I know, I know. Impulse buys. Here’s a tip: make a list before going shopping to minimize impulse buys.
And another tip: Only buy what’s on the list. That’s the kicker.
Anyway, I made it through the wonderful jungle of produce and hacked my way through the processed frankenfoods to the check out line. That blessed, blessed thing, the check out line. After nearly 8 hours in heels meant to be sat in for 3, I was ready to Go Home. My ankles were ready to buckle and I was hungry. It didn’t help that the roasted chicken smelled so damn good.
I walked up to lane 2, bypassing the self check outs. I hate those things with a passion. I think they’re stupid. When grocers set their prices, they take into account their employee’s salaries and build that into the price. When we go to the check out lines, we’re basically paying the cashiers for their service. Then all of a sudden, someone thought it would be a good idea to make me ring myself up. Now I’m doing the job of the cashier, but do grocers offer a discount for going through the self check out line? No, no they don’t. What’s more, it depletes the job market. One person can run four lines at once, and now three tax-paying Americans and/or legal residents are out of work. Yay unemployment lines.
So I stood in line. A line with four ill behaved children behind me. I shouldn’t really call them ill behaved. They were behaving the exact way that normal children would, if they had a mother who paid more attention to the latest issue of Star and her iPhone than her children.
“Ok kids, heres what we gonna do. I gots to get yo’ daddy from the train station, then we gotta come back here and go to the doller store.” Ghetto Mama barely looked up from her phone at her four children milling about her.
“NO MOMMY!! I WANNA GO TO THE DOLLAR STORE FIRST!” Ankle Biter 1 started screaming, obviously perturbed that her night’s schedule had been disrupted. All four children ranged from about four to ten, and I’d put her around five.
“He out in the cold. Now hush up.” Somewhere, my elementary school English teacher began spinning in her grave, and the poor woman hasn’t even died yet.
“I want candy. If we can’t go to the dollar store, we should get candy instead.” Ankle Biter 2 popped up at my elbow. I don’t know why this particular child was looking at me when he said this. I had neither the want nor the ability to get him the candy he wanted.
At this point, I was more amused than anything. I could tell Ghetto Mama was a less-than-involved parent, which I found sad, but at this point it wasn’t really affecting me. GM was standing about three feet behind me, mindlessly thumbing through one of the low budget tabloid magazines, and tapping her two-inch long acrylic nails together.
“What candy does you want? No chocolate, only the good stuff, k? Starbust or Skittles.” Then she went back to reading an article about a Nebraska woman claiming to have conceived twin Elvis alien babies after seeing Jesus in a potato chip. Ankle Biters 1-3 were overjoyed. Ankle Biter 4 was ambivalent about the candy, and instead was staring at the Pepsi bottles in the small cooler at the end cap.
I should note at this point that the cashier was extraordinarily slow. I don’t know if he was slow, or if they chose to staff with slow moving people to encourage customers to use the comparatively faster self check out lines (see above rant) but whatever the reason, I was stuck. Two Hispanic women in front of me were having a lively conversation with him about something I couldn’t understand. Cashier Man let the plastic divider fall in front of the motion detector, so the belt wouldn’t move. Instead of moving the divider so the items would slide to him, he’d just reach farther down the belt for the items. This meant that my items didn’t move, and GM wasn’t able to load her food. She was not happy about this, and for some reason chose to glare at me. I gave a small shrug and a shy smile. More glaring.
The kids gathered around the candy display, each contemplating the complex and difficult decision before them. Starburst? Or Skittles? This wouldn’t be half so annoying if they weren’t attempting to squeeze five bodies (four children plus me) into a space where only one (me) had been standing. They had absolutely no concept that anyone else was around, or that maybe they should wait two minutes so I could move ahead.
Relax, Mel, I thought to myself. They’re young children. You don’t need to snap at children. They just want their candy. For those of you who read my introductory blog entry, you may remember that I have been dealing with a metabolic disorder for the past year. My blood sugar tends to drop suddenly, usually if I haven’t eaten dinner by 8pm. This causes me to get hurricane-level bitchy quite unexpectedly. I realize this and do what I can to curb it, including mentally reminding myself not to make children cry. I’m sure their mother will say something to them soon.
Nope. She put her magazine back and helped herself to another one.
“Hi, could you move back, please? Thank you.” Ankle Biter 1’s eyes got wide, then she quickly dropped her gaze to the ground. Ok…fine. I don’t expect an answer, but at least move back when you’re asked to, kiddo.
Cashier Man was still slowly processing through the order ahead of me. Customer Lady couldn’t figure out the credit card machine. She kept hitting Cancel. I kept hitting my Wall of Patience.
By this point, three of the four had made their choices and were eagerly trying to show Ghetto Mama their candy. Now bored with her magazine, she was focused on trying to dial a friend. Had I not been peeved and hungry, I would have found the sight of her trying to use an iPhone touch screen with unnaturally long nails hilarious (do you remember the SNL skit where Kristin Wiig and Neil Patrick Harris played two air traffic controllers with obscenely long finger nails? It was like a ghetto fab version of that). She began gossiping with a woman named Shenay (phonetic spelling) about how her baby daddy just ain’t no good, and she needs to start taking care of her babies and be a good mom. May I point out that as Ghetto Mama was telling Shenay to be a good mother, two of her [ignored] children began playing the punching game, and were dangerously close to face shots. Oh, irony.
I tried to move as far forward as I could, without being uncomfortably close to Customer Lady trying to figure out which was the green button. Apparently this was not far enough for Ankle Biter 2, who…no joke…pushed me out of the way.
Oh, that’s right. He knelt down to get a better view of the Skittles box, decided I was too close, so he reached back, touched my knee, and pushed. Hard. Ordinarily, this would have elicited a very strongly worded response from yours truly…however I was bound and determined not to cause a scene. And I really didn’t want to be That Girl who made a five year old cry in a grocery store. On top of it, I wasn’t 100% convinced that his mother wouldn’t attempt to cut a bitch. I just wanted to go home.
The grocery gods heard my prayers. Customer Lady found the green button and her order was [finally] processed. Cashier Man began scanning my order. The belt began moving forward and DM was able to unload her groceries—with wild, angry abandon.
Cashier Man scanned my cat food.
“Oh! You have cat!” [SLAM] GM threw a box of frozen chicken patties on the belt. I jumped about a foot. I was unaware boxes could make that loud of a noise. “I love cat!” [SLAM] Prepacked ears of corn. “My daughter, she bring home cat last week.” [SLAM] “I love cat.” [SLAM!] “I see her and say hi kitty kitty kitty!” [SLAM] “How you kitty?”
“Um, nice. I have two. They’re cute.” [SLAM!!!]
“MAMA I WANT STARBURST NOW!” One of the Ankle Biters (I’d lost track as to which one by now) was apparently ready for his/her candy. I don’t blame him/her. I wanted my dinner too.
“No, baby. I got to pay for it first.” Ankle Biter nodded so fast I thought his/her head was going to snap off his/her body. (Is it bad that my first thought was “oh sweet Jesus don’t have a seizure. I’d feel like a bitch if I left but I really want to go home”?) The three kids (number 4 was still staring at the Pepsi. I’m a little concerned about that one) tossed their sugar pills onto the belt…right in between my milk and my kitty litter. I started to say something, but oh no, Cashier Man decided to pick up the pace at this particular moment in time, and before a sound could even escape my lips, he scanned the candy and tossed in my bags.
“THAT’S MY CANDY!!!” The children wailed in various degrees of unison.
“Hey, that’s my kids candy! Not yours!” Ghetto Mama took a break from her gab session to interject. Because I was totally trying to steal it.
“Um, those don’t belong to me. She needs to pay for them.” Cashier Man smiled, nodded, and removed the candy from my total. I swiped my card and tapped in my PIN faster than I’ve ever keyed a PIN before in my life. A few seconds later, my purchase was approved and I was on my way.
Behind me, I heard a voice.
“Yeah, I dunno Shenay, but some peoples are just so rude. Tried to walk off with my babies’ candy and all that…some bitches just don’t have no respect, you know wha’ I sayin’?”
Oh. Sweet. Jesus. Take me now.
